What do you think?
Rate this book
The Orphans' Home Cycle #5-7
Three Plays from the Orphans' Home Cycle: Courtship / Valentine's Day / 1918
This is the central volume in Horton Foote’s remarkable nine-play Orphans’ Home Cycle, in which the author chronicles the evolution of a family—the strengths that bind its members together and the strains that force them apart—and the cataclysmic changes in Southern society over twenty-six turbulent years. Beginning in 1902 with the death of the protagonist’s father—a loss that sends twelve-year-old Horace Robedaux on an odyssey to the darkest corners of the heart—and ending in 1928 with another momentous funeral, Foote traces a lineage of loss and regeneration.
Caught in a conflict as old as society itself, Elizabeth Vaughn is at once drawn and propelled toward Horace Robedaux. The proud and wealthy Vaughns frown on their daughter’s love for the orphaned clothing salesman, but the revolving mirrors of time turn and turn about, and both the Vaughns and the newly married Robedauxs are tested not only by their pride but also by the shadows of death and disease, and the more subtle pressures of their family’s and their society’s future.
The Orphans’ Home Cycle (a title based on a poem by Marianne Moore) is a unique series of plays spanning thirty years in the lives of its central characters. Moving and complete as individual plays, the entire cycle is a panoramic and penetrating picture of American society during a crucial period in our history.
Caught in a conflict as old as society itself, Elizabeth Vaughn is at once drawn and propelled toward Horace Robedaux. The proud and wealthy Vaughns frown on their daughter’s love for the orphaned clothing salesman, but the revolving mirrors of time turn and turn about, and both the Vaughns and the newly married Robedauxs are tested not only by their pride but also by the shadows of death and disease, and the more subtle pressures of their family’s and their society’s future.
The Orphans’ Home Cycle (a title based on a poem by Marianne Moore) is a unique series of plays spanning thirty years in the lives of its central characters. Moving and complete as individual plays, the entire cycle is a panoramic and penetrating picture of American society during a crucial period in our history.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
About the author
Horton Foote
126 books48 followersAlbert Horton Foote, Jr. was an American playwright and screenwriter, perhaps best known for his Academy Award-winning screenplays for the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird and the 1983 film Tender Mercies, and his notable live television dramas during the Golden Age of Television. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1995 for his play The Young Man From Atlanta.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
April 16, 2010
Just not much of a fan of Foote; I think there's something in his dialogue that irks me.
December 31, 2017
This was donated to the UCB Training Center library.
April 29, 2025
so much said so gently as though it were merely life
May 7, 2020
It’s so much fun to read these plays. Each is an installment in the nine-play drama The Orphans Home Cycle. They form the saga of hard-luck Horace Robedaux and a cast of eccentric early Texans. Delightful.
November 8, 2020
Courtship relates Horace's early romance in 1915 with Elizabeth Vaughn. Her parents think he's too wild.
Valentine's Day is set in late 1917 and early 1918. Horace and Elizabeth eloped on Valentine's Day and she is now five months pregnant. Her parents have not spoken to them since the elopement, but a reconciliation may be possible.
For me 1918 has been the most moving and emotional of the seven plays I've read so far. The pandemic has come to the small town where Horace, Elizabeth, and their baby Jenny live. In addition to constant reports of the deaths of friends and neighbors from the flu there are the announcements of the deaths of young men overseas due to the ongoing world war. This one was a real weeper; would be a hard one to see as a live performance.
11/7/20: Movie of Courtship with Hallie Foote, Amanda Plummer, and William Converse-Roberts as Horace
Movie of Valentine's Day has Hallie Foote and William Converse-Roberts as Elizabeth and Horace, Matthew Broderick as Brother, Steven Hill (from Law & Order) as Cousin George, and Richard Jenkins as the landlady's alcoholic son.
11/8/20: 1918 movie stars Hallie Foote and William Converse-Roberts with Matthew Broderick as n'er do well Brother.
Valentine's Day is set in late 1917 and early 1918. Horace and Elizabeth eloped on Valentine's Day and she is now five months pregnant. Her parents have not spoken to them since the elopement, but a reconciliation may be possible.
For me 1918 has been the most moving and emotional of the seven plays I've read so far. The pandemic has come to the small town where Horace, Elizabeth, and their baby Jenny live. In addition to constant reports of the deaths of friends and neighbors from the flu there are the announcements of the deaths of young men overseas due to the ongoing world war. This one was a real weeper; would be a hard one to see as a live performance.
11/7/20: Movie of Courtship with Hallie Foote, Amanda Plummer, and William Converse-Roberts as Horace
Movie of Valentine's Day has Hallie Foote and William Converse-Roberts as Elizabeth and Horace, Matthew Broderick as Brother, Steven Hill (from Law & Order) as Cousin George, and Richard Jenkins as the landlady's alcoholic son.
11/8/20: 1918 movie stars Hallie Foote and William Converse-Roberts with Matthew Broderick as n'er do well Brother.
February 6, 2009
The middle three plays in the Orphan's Home Cycle dealing with the true love of Horace's life, Elizabeth Vaughn and their courtship and subsequent elopement. The last play, 1918, deals with the devastation of the Spanish flu epidemic of that year and the end of WWI. Beautiful, epic, sublime.
Read
October 9, 2009Courtship, Valentine's Day, 1918: Three Plays from the Orphans' Home Cycle (Pantheon Classic Cookbook) by Horton Foote (1987)
December 15, 2013
More good plays from Foote.
March 20, 2016
A cute collection of WWI dramas with a touch of forbidden love. :) Classic.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews